Sign in toCleveland.com

Giant Eagle plans small-format store at Clifton and West 117th, in project that hinges on church demo

FIFTH-CHURCH-SCIENTIST-NOVEMBER-2013.JPG

The long-empty Fifth Church of Christ Scientist, at Lake Avenue and West 117th Street in Cleveland, would be demolished under a block-wide redevelopment plan presented by city officials and Carnegie Cos. at a community meeting last week. Carnegie, which controls the surrounding land, razed a deteriorating retail strip on Clifton last year and plans to build new shopping just south of the church.
(John Kuntz, The Plain Dealer)

We were never under any pretense that the city could do historic preservation. Our goal was to nurture the property ... into viable economic use.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A key gateway site at Cleveland's western edge
could be redeveloped with a grocery store and other retailers, but that
new investment requires the demolition of a long-vacant church that has
eluded the wrecking ball since the early 1990s.

The Fifth Church
of Christ Scientist, at Lake Avenue and West 117th Street, must fall to
enable a land swap between the city of Cleveland and Carnegie Cos., a
Solon developer that owns the surrounding block. Late last year,
Carnegie razed an old retail strip along Clifton Boulevard, just south
of the church, setting the stage for new construction near the city's
border with Lakewood.

A site plan released last week shows new
retail lining Clifton between West 116th and 117th street, with parking
tucked behind the stores.

View full sizeA site plan unveiled last week shows the proposed redevelopment of a key city block at the Cleveland-Lakewood border. The strip of property along Lake Avenue, which the city would own after a land swap, could be a potential site for townhouses, though some neighbors want to see green space there. The plans hinge on demolition of the vacant Fifth Church of Christ Scientist, on the northwest corner of the block.Carnegie Cos.

Giant Eagle, which closed a more
traditional store on Clifton five years ago, hopes to return to the
neighborhood with a 30,000-square-foot market focused on fresh produce,
prepared foods, beer and wine. The city would hang onto a strip of land
along Lake, for a possible townhouse project or green space.

If
various city boards and commissions sign off, the new retail project
could put an end to two decades of neighborhood protests, failed
developments and deferred demolitions at a critical corner. But
neighbors remain divided over the future of the church, a city landmark
that has been rotting since the late 1980s. And some residents want more
clarity on what will replace the domed building and whether the main
entrance or other pieces of the historic building can be saved.

"This
plan is so much more improved than the previous plans," Michael
Flickinger, who lives nearby, said to city officials and Carnegie
executives during a packed community meeting Wednesday night. "What I
would ask the city -- and I know it was mentioned -- many of us would like
to see the portico of the church saved."

Historic church no closer to revival

The fate of the church
and the potential retail project are different issues, involving
properties controlled by two different landlords. For the last year,
though, city officials have said they want to see a complete
redevelopment of the block. The deal proposed by Carnegie and Giant
Eagle might be the city's best shot, since the plan brings together two
players with significant power over the site.

Cleveland
protectively took possession of the church in 2002, accepting it from a company affiliated with Giant Eagle. At that time, the
Pittsburgh-based grocer still operated a store in Carnegie's strip
center on Clifton.

To prevent a competitor from moving in, the
grocer placed deed restrictions on the church that make it nearly
impossible to build a sizable grocery store on that property or the
surrounding land. Those restrictions don't roll off until late 2022.
Giant Eagle is the only party that can lift them.

During the last
10 years, developers have proposed everything from a chain bookstore to
residences as reuse possibilities for the church. A major retail plan
fell apart after stores including Giant Eagle flocked to a site at West
117th and Interstate 90. Another design, which included townhouses,
dissipated during the recession.

In recent years, City Councilman
Jay Westbrook has led everyone from home builders to representatives from
the Cleveland Museum of Art through the Fifth Church -- with little
yield. The building could cost more than $2 million to repair, he said,
and any developer would face parking challenges on the small site.

"We
were never under any pretense that the city could do historic
preservation," Westbrook told a crowd of nearly 200 people at
Wednesday's meeting. "Our goal was to nurture the property to be
reutilized -- put into viable economic use."

During a tour of the
church early this year, Westbrook navigated the crumbling reading room
and the octagonal main hall as water dripped from the ceiling and
plinked in the walls. Outside, workmen hauled a tattered recliner, the
remains of a squatter's nest, out of a basement stairwell littered with
food wrappers, beer cans and malt-liquor bottles.

The church,
built in the 1920s and abandoned sixty years later, could continue to
languish, waiting for a savior with the money and the will to step in.
Or the city could let the building go, now that the longtime owner of
the surrounding property has an anchor tenant and what Westbrook
describes as a "once in a lifetime" plan to remake it.

Market District Express would anchor project

Affiliates
of the Carnegie Cos. have owned the Clifton property for decades. After
demolishing the tired retail buildings, which had structural problems,
Carnegie toyed with dozens of redevelopment schemes for the site.

In
March, a neighborhood group obtained one version of the plan, showing
parking along Clifton and three freestanding retailers, the largest of
them replacing the church. That sketch prompted strong pushback, as
nearby residents railed against what they described as suburban-style
development and worried that the block might be refashioned without much
public involvement.

The Shoppes at Clifton proposal that Carnegie
presented last week looked much different, after months of meetings
with the city and a stakeholder group representing residents, merchants
and neighborhood organizations. The new site plan shows a two-story
Giant Eagle Market District Express store, totaling 30,000 square feet,
at Clifton and West 116th. A smaller retail building at West 117th would
house four of five tenants, such as a financial services business or a
specialty food store.

View full sizeA two-story Giant Eagle Market District Express store would occupy the northwest corner of Clifton Boulevard and West 116th Street, under plans being floated by Carnegie Cos., the property owner. A smaller retail building, for a handful of tenants, would sit at West 117th Street and Clifton.John Kuntz, The Plain Dealer

"We're extremely excited about the
opportunity to return to Clifton Boulevard," Todd Waldo, a senior real
estate development manager for Giant Eagle, said at the community
meeting. "It is something that we put a lot of thought into."

The
Market District Express, the first such store in Ohio, would include a
100-seat restaurant on the second floor and a patio fronting on a
promenade stretching from Clifton to the parking lot behind the retail
buildings.

To make the deal work, Carnegie would trade its land
along Lake for part of the church property along West 117th. With a
cleared stretch along Lake, the city could seek proposals from townhouse
developers, said Chris Warren, Cleveland's chief of regional
development. Some neighbors are lobbying for green space on the site,
but Warren cautioned that the cost of creating and maintaining a park
would be hard for the city to stomach.

Peter Meisel, a principal
at Carnegie, said the company does not anticipate using city subsidies
for the project, called the Shoppes on Clifton. The city would shoulder
the cost of the church demolition and might invest in bike racks and
public art around the shops, using money from the sale of a city-owned
lot on the east side of West 116th to Carnegie. That lot could become
parking for retail employees.

<a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/7552131/">What would you like to see at Clifton and West 117th?</a>

Any land sale would require approval
from Cleveland City Council. The Cleveland Landmarks Commission, which
oversees significant buildings and historic districts, must vote on the
church demolition and the new retail plan. So far, neither project has
popped up on a public meeting agenda.

"It's much, much better than
what was leaked to the community back in March," Jeon Francis, an
artist and neighbor leading a public-information campaign about the
Clifton site, said of Carnegie's plan.

"But it doesn't seem to be a
home run," he added, noting that he and other residents still have
unanswered questions about whether pieces of the church could be woven
into the site and what might be built along Lake to complete the block.

The
city is studying the potential costs of salvaging bits of the Fifth
Church. With Carnegie and Giant Eagle eager to start their project, the
next few months might bring resolution for one more dilapidated
landmark, in a city struggling to find solutions for scads of empty
religious buildings.

Click on the color-coded areas of this map for information about the individual parcels.